by Vance Huxley
Somehow everyone seemed to get really involved, and Abel found himself explaining the magical system and creatures, assisted by Rob and Kelis. Even Rob’s big sister, Samantha, seemed to get interested. Melanie, his thirteen-year-old ‘baby’ sister really got into the swing, wanting to know why none of the characters had a young sibling, called Melanie or possibly Mel. Ferryl offered to create a wind for Kelis, or show everyone the brownies and pixies in the room. She’d sent out her little mist connections to Rob and Kelis so all three kept smiling at the same time.
Eventually another well-dressed and very polite young woman told them Christmas dinner was ready, and everyone went through into a huge dining room. Rob, Kelis and Abel hung back for a quick round of mutual congratulation and pride. Rob’s family and Abel’s mum had known about the game, but not the details. Now they’d seen the whole thing, and despite some teasing nobody had ripped their idea to shreds. There’d been a few looks at Abel’s shirt sleeve when the pictures of Ferryl Shayde went round, and Abel thought Melanie would try for a look when she got the chance.
Christmas Day turned out to be one long party, to a greater or lesser degree. Not the loud music, crazy hat and dancing type, and definitely not the boozy type, just a group of people being happy talking together. Dinner started out looking very formal, a massive carved wood table with big wooden chairs around it and a half ton of assorted cutlery and glass arranged across the top. Mrs. Ventner, Jessica, soon stopped the formality, asking for extra cushions for anyone who needed them and removing half her cutlery. “It’s not as if we have to impress some customer today, is it?”
The meal meandered. Abel sort of expected the staff to be like they were in the few restaurants he’d been to, hovering to scoop up his plate and get the pudding served. Not this time. Despite some of them taking their time to finish, everyone had their plates cleared at the same time, and in spite of delays the next course came in piping hot. John, Abel’s dad, found himself volunteered as turkey carver, and Abel mentioned to his mum they’d found where the turkling’s dad went, unless this was an ostrich.
After everyone announced themselves thoroughly stuffed, they all went back into the lounge. Jessica didn’t seem in any hurry to send anyone home, turning on a TV for anyone wanting to watch. Melanie lost interest in the game when Kelis showed her another TV in a smaller sitting room where she could look through an entire catalogue of programmes and films. Kelis came back, and beckoned Abel and Rob. “Just going to the library Mum.”
“Good. Have fun, you three.” Abel shrugged to his mum, he’d no idea what it was about.
* * *
The room definitely fitted the description; three walls of tall bookshelves, all full, with a big window in the fourth wall. Kelis sat in a padded chair, and twirled it around with her arms out wide. “Welcome to Bonny’s Tavern, the original and best.” She laughed at their faces. “We can have this room. Completely. Mum says make a bonfire if we don’t want the books. Dad never let anyone in, possibly because there’s a section there that opens. Behind the books used to be enough booze to stock a real Tavern, or maybe float it.”
“Really?” Abel noted the complete absence of magical creatures in here. “Already protected?”
Kelis swung open a section of books to show the Tavern sign propped up on the counter behind, a big version carved into a sheet of wood. She brought it out and put it on a picture hook. “I hid it so I could do the big reveal. Mum doesn’t mind how much I use that electric chisel.” Her face sobered. “She’s really on a sort of high, doing everything he hated, but sooner or later she’ll come down. We’d better make the most of this place because Aunty Celia still thinks Mum should leave and I don’t think she’s sure herself.”
“Our settee is still there.” Rob laughed. “Not really up to the standard of the ones here.”
“My mum told me she’d throw me out if Kelis needed a bed, make me sleep on the settee.” Abel suffered a mixture of accusations from Rob that he’d only said it to get Kelis to move in, and Kelis claiming it was a bid for Rob’s settee. Abel countered by insisting he really wanted the chair Kelis still twirled around now and then.
“Please roll up your sleeve.” Abel did, and after a moment Ferryl asked, “Will this truly be the Tavern?” Ferryl had been very quiet, so now they all stopped larking about to answer.
“Yes, Mum said so.”
“A home for all of us, the characters? Including Ferryl Shayde?”
Kelis answered very quietly, possibly because Ferryl sounded nervous, tentative, which wasn’t usual. “Until we move. For a long time if I can persuade Mum to stay. You can even come here without that lump, if you need some space.”
“Nobody gives me a home. Not once they see me, know what I am.” Both Rob and Kelis gasped as Ferryl left her tattoo, because they’d never seen her shimmery wind form. The vague shape moved around the room, never the same for more than a few moments. “Thank you.” She flowed back into the tattoo, and her voice became stronger, more like her usual self. “Time for a party.” Her tattoo exploded, literally, into a frantic firework display before balloons and streamers slowly settled over her cat-form.
“Is this why you wanted all the files? We can come here every Tavern night, instead of to our bedrooms.” Rob sat on the floor. “I’ll want to bring a cushion, or one from in the lounge.”
“This is instead of my bedroom. Mum told me that regardless of your house rules, she wasn’t having dozens of young men trooping in and out of my bedroom at all hours.” Kelis giggled. “Dozens?” She finally stood up from the chair and opened the fridge under the counter to show it stocked with soft drinks. “Mum’s idea of hilarious because Dad kept it full of booze. Drink anyone?”
“I’m stuffed, thanks.” Rob dropped into the chair. “That’s better. I’m not sure where you sit.”
“Come on, we’ll raid the office.” Abel and Rob shrugged at each other and followed her out. With a wave to her mum, Kelis led them past the lounge. “Just raiding the office, Mum. We need a few things for the Tavern.”
“Help yourself dear. If anything you want is screwed down, wait until the workmen come back to take it out properly.” Rob and Abel exchanged glances as they followed Kelis to a room at the back of the house. Both Kelis and her mum seemed to be on some sort of high.
“Look. Four more chairs. They are supposed to be for meetings, but he never had many. You can take the big chair as well if you want, but I’m never sitting in that!” Kelis went to the glass table and licked her fingers before smearing them along it. “He used to get really uptight about the cleaner leaving a fingerprint on this. I’m surprised Mum hasn’t put a hammer through it.”
By the time they’d moved the four chairs, and emptied a cupboard of office stationery, Abel at least had begun to wonder if Kelis might put a hammer through the table. “I could teach her real control with that table.” Kelis had just smeared it again, she did so every time she went past. “With practice she could melt little holes, or even write a curse in it. If he really did like the table, the curse should work.”
Abel dropped back far enough to speak privately, since Ferryl had stopped using the mist connections while they moved furniture. “Both of them, Kelis and her mum, have a lot of anger to get rid of. Let them get through it without doing something they might be sorry about later.”
“It doesn’t have to be permanent. Boils, piles, ulcers. Rotten teeth? Septic ears! They are painful, smelly, visually disgusting, embarrassing and almost impossible to cure. I just want to say thank you for my home.” Ferryl sniggered. “Kelis might not be sorry even afterwards.”
“No. Please.”
“All right, because otherwise you’ll use that name.”
“I haven’t for ages.” Abel thought a moment. “I haven’t needed it.”
“I’m being good. It really is difficult and irritating.” Ferryl’s mist connections reached out and cut off their privacy.
* * *
When the party ended every
one went home together, laughing and joking even as Abel and his mum turned up their own front path. Once inside, all the joking suddenly stopped. “Abel, I need a serious talk to you. You aren’t in trouble, but this might take some time. Would you like a drink?”
Abel stared at his Mum, baffled. “Not really thanks, I’m bloated.”
“In that case we may as well get comfy.” Once they were settled in the living room, Abel watched as his mum almost started to speak several times. Finally she took a deep breath and pulled out one of the sketches of games creatures, a thorny. “Where did you get the idea for this?”
“We’ve been building the game and the creatures for ages, Mum. I’m not sure.”
Even as he spoke Abel could see Mum didn’t believe him, but he couldn’t figure out why. Not until she whispered, “I’ve seen them. Things like those in the game, some of them. A long time ago.” Her voice strengthened, though she looked really worried. “It can be fixed, the hallucinations. It takes time, and lots of counselling.”
“How did she stop seeing them? That is not possible.”
“You saw things then stopped seeing them?” Abel wasn’t confirming he did see anything. He didn’t fancy counselling.
“Yes.” Her eyes and voice dropped. “Not really, but you’ll learn to ignore them because they aren’t real.” Abel wanted to hug his mum because right then she looked frightened, and ashamed, then he gave up on fifteen-year-old hang-ups and did.
“It’s okay Mum.”
“Tell her.” Abel considered it, but Ferryl claimed that adults finding out about magic usually went crackers. They couldn’t handle it the same as younger minds. “She already knows, and thinks she is crazy. It is well hidden, this knowledge, or I would have seen it.” A tinge of amusement touched Ferryl’s voice. “I didn’t pry too deeply because of how worried you were.”
Abel decided to test a bit first. “Are there less of them lately?”
“You believe me? You see them?” Abel kept his face straight and didn’t answer, trying to make up his mind. His mum didn’t wait. “They all went away, finally, and I thought that after twenty years I was cured. Then some came back. I’ve been wondering about more therapy.”
After hugging her again, Abel went for it. “You don’t need therapy Mum. I got rid of them. You complained about the mess so I let the good ones back in.”
“Should I explain?”
“I’ll try to explain Mum.” Abel hoped Ferryl understood the hint in that and kept quiet. “I can see them. You remember Halloween?” She nodded, eyes wide, so Abel ploughed on. “We really did go out on a creature hunt and drove most of the nasty ones out of Brinsford.”
“Rob and Kelis as well? What are those things? Is that game real, all the characters?” She frowned. “Good ones, and nasty ones?”
“No Mum, it really is a game but the creatures are accurate. The game really will tell you which ones help with housekeeping, I promise.” Abel set into explaining, or halfway anyway. He had no intention of explaining Ferryl Shayde, magic, or glyphs, though he showed her the Tavern hexes cut into the tops of the doors where she wouldn’t see them. Eventually both of them were too tired to keep going. Abel suffered a proper mum-hug before bed, and she seemed happy enough going up to bed.
Boxing Day morning Abel found his mum in the kitchen, happy and smiling and looking straight at Pictsies hunting along the skirting. “What are they after?” She sighed. “I’ve never dared to even look at them, not properly. I remember slimy ones.”
“Pictsies hunt bugs, sort of super-spiders without webs. Some of the slimy ones will clean up stains, allegedly, but we don’t like them.” Abel laughed. “Kelis freaked about them, more than the rest.”
“There seem to be less stains these days. Washing machines are noisier but look better than creatures.”
“Is there a way to get rid of them at work? Some people seem to be left alone, but my workspace is covered in them. There are bigger ones in the car park, but none go near my car now.” Her eyes opened wide. “You protected my car? How?”
“If you’ll let me make you a Tavern sign, Mum, I can give you one to clear your workspace. You can have more for the washroom and wherever you eat. The creatures are also frightened off by anything religious, like a properly blessed cross or people who go to church every Sunday.” Abel launched into another explanation. The next few days were interspersed with little sessions like that, where Abel explained a particular creature or mark to his mum. He had to explain the marks on the post near her tree when she spotted them. On the plus side, his mum wanted the hex, the Tavern mark, properly carved into every window frame when Abel explained that worked better.
“You should tell her, all of it.”
“Nope. Mum’s happy. She’s relaxed and cracking jokes about creatures, not pretending not to see them in case she gets locked up as being a nutter.” Abel still wasn’t sure his mum could handle the Glyphmistress or dancing tattoo part yet.
“Chris is not stupid.” As usual Abel flinched at Ferryl using Mum’s real name. “She will look at the Tavern hex, and the creatures, and wonder what else is true.”
“Then I’ll tell her more.”
“Introduce us?”
“Mum will go absolutely barmy if she finds out I let you out from under a stone and then brought you home.” Abel still wondered why he’d done that so quickly. Abel also worried Mum might push a bit harder about who or what Ferryl Shayde might be. He still didn’t want details, because it might be gross and he needed his tattoo.
“You will have to tell her in the end.” Abel didn’t have an answer to that. Though perhaps he could see that point coming sometime in the future when she started asking about the creatures in the garden. He wasn’t sure if Mum was being fooled, or just happy and didn’t want to ask how her son suddenly knew all about an invisible world.
* * *
Abel thought the day had come when Mum called him and pointed into the cupboard under the stairs. “Explain that, please.” Abel looked past her, knowing full well what she could see. He used this cupboard to feed the brownies, pixies and pictsies.
For a moment he hesitated, but the creatures were obviously clustered around their saucers of sugar and milk. “These are trapped in the house, so a bit of extra energy helps them. They are all good ones Mum, honest.”
“I know, I took that list of yours to work and photocopied it, and I’m trying to learn it. There are some missing, creatures I see in town.” She laughed, to Abel’s immense relief. “There again, I don’t know the name of every bird and insect I see in the fields. Why did the lights stop?”
“Probably they just seemed to glow because it’s dark under there.” The creatures were gradually edging away into the shadows, away from Abel. They treated him as dangerous, but not his mum.
“Chris sees the magic in them. Sooner or later you must tell her. Before she sees you cast a glyph.”
Abel settled for warming one of the saucers of milk, explaining to his mum that pixies preferred that. Two days later he found the saucers on the sideboard in the living room. His mum didn’t think the food should be in that dusty old cupboard, and anyway she liked watching them. Abel didn’t try to explain it wasn’t their food, or he’d have to go into the creatures gathering magic.
* * *
Kelis, or her mum, insisted The Tavern became the permanent home for all game planning. Rob and Abel were told the code for the gates once they’d been fixed, and were always met by smiles and greetings from both Mrs. Ventner and Aunty Celia. Partly, Kelis finally admitted, because her mum remembered something about that night. Not clearly, just that Kelis had somehow knocked her dad down and got them both away. Kelis explained about Abel and Rob teaching her some self-defence against bullies at school, and thought her mum visualised some sort of Judo. She’d offered the library at least partly as a thank you, though she also enjoyed turning it into a playroom with soft drinks.
Abel barely needed the code for the gates because they w
ere open more often than closed. The occupants of the other four big new houses along one side of Brinn’s Lane usually kept themselves fairly private, even if they weren’t as fanatical about it as Mr. Ventner had been. Now several used the season as a reason to pop round and say hello. The rest of the village usually stayed clear of the posh types in the new houses, even if some of the village houses probably cost as much. Now they, and even a few of those from the council houses, dropped by once word spread they’d be welcome. Some were just nosy, but regardless of why they came most of them brought something, a few home-made buns or something similar.
Kelis nearly choked laughing when she told Rob and Abel about Stan visiting. He’d brought a fresh hare he’d allegedly fallen over out on a walk, and advised them to hang it for a bit to get it to taste right. Unfortunately, neither Kelis’s mum nor Aunty Celia had any idea where to start with skinning or dressing it so the hare went to the butcher in town before coming back sliced and diced. Now Aunty Celia lived in dread of Stan turning up again because handling a warm body had freaked her out.
Although she tried to persuade them, neither Aunty Celia nor her mum would let Kelis take the security cameras off the trees in the garden, even to fasten them on poles. As a result, the dryads in her garden still wouldn’t talk to Kelis. The three young willows by the bridge remained quite chatty, for trees. Rob still didn’t quite trust dryads, but had taken on the job of approaching any he could find along the nearby field boundaries. So far none of the dryads that would talk trusted him enough to consider a bargain. Abel warned him that Henry would start complaining about trespassing, but Rob seemed quite eager. That left Abel hoping Rob would remember control if Henry tried to get physical.
